Singapore affirms commitment to law as U.S. accuses DeepSeek of using smuggled chips
Singapore’s trade ministry said on Saturday there is no reason to believe that DeepSeek obtained any export-controlled products from Singapore, after the U.S. Commerce Department accused the Chinese company of using U.S. chips that are prohibited from being shipped to China, according to Reuters, citing a source familiar with the matter.
The ministry did not confirm whether DeepSeek had gained access to Nvidia chips that were subject to U.S. export controls via intermediaries in Singapore, but said it has always upheld the rule of law and acted decisively and firmly against individuals and companies that flout the rules.
An Nvidia spokesperson said many of its customers have business entities in Singapore and use those entities for products destined for the U.S. and the west.
“We insist that our partners comply with all applicable laws, and if we receive any information to the contrary, act accordingly,” Nvidia said.
DeepSeek has previously stated it used Nvidia’s H800 chips, which it could have legally purchased in 2023. Moreover, the Chinese company seems to have utilised Nvidia’s less powerful H20s that can still be lawfully shipped to China.
Separately, the Chinese company has been facing cyberattacks since January 3, with the attacks reaching a peak on Monday and Tuesday due to a massive brute-force assault from U.S. IP addresses, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday, citing Yuyuan Tantian, a CCTV social media account.
“All the attack IPs were recorded; all are from the US,” a cybersecurity expert told CCTV, China’s state media.
The earlier stage of the cyberattack contained more distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks aimed at disrupting DeepSeek’s normal service by overwhelming its servers and bandwidth with a flood of internet traffic, while the more recent attacks were primarily brute-force attacks aimed at cracking user IDs and passwords to understand how DeepSeek works, CCTV reported, citing a report from China’s cybersecurity firm QAX Technology Group.
China’s DeepSeek last week launched a free assistant it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost of U.S. models. Within days, it became the most downloaded app in Apple’s App Store and stirred concerns about the United States’ lead in AI, sparking a rout that wiped around $1 trillion off U.S. technology stocks.
